Re: [cjl@WHEATIES.AI.MIT.EDU: Problem with format]

[Mabry Tyson <TYSON@WARBUCKS.AI.SRI.COM>]

Hi Peter!

It is a brain-damaged FORMAT function, in my opinion.  FORMAT, when it
can ask the output stream what the position (column) is, will do ok.  It
can ask the TTY what the position is.  For a string, it gets the
position assuming the start of the string is column 1 (0, whatever).
But it doesn't get the position for output to a file.  Sigh...

See the documentation for ~T on page 316 of Volume 5 of the Symbolics Docs.
(And this is somewhat compatible with what CLtL says on page 399.)

The best work around that I can come up with is to generate strings
with your format command and then shove the string to the output file.
Something like
(format file "~A" 
      (with-output-to-string (pseduo-file))
	(generate-print-entry-inner e show-all pseudo-file)))